Synopses & Reviews
The fate of Polish Jews under the German occupation has been well documented, but not as much is known about the wartime ordeal of non-Jewish Poles. Phillip Rutherford investigates Nazi policies of "ethnic cleansing" to reveal the striking anti-Polish nature of the crusade to Germanize newly occupied territory and to show that these actions were a dress rehearsal for the Holocaust.
Rutherford explores the origin and implementation of Nazi resettlement schemes in occupied western Poland, where Germany sought to reclaim territory for its expanding population by booting out the "ethnically inferior" Poles who had lived there for generations. Focusing on the Wartheland region, he examines four major deportation operations carried out between December 1939 and March 1941, including the day-to-day logistics and actions overseen by the powerful German Central Emigration Office.
Drawing on both German archival and Polish-language sources, Rutherford considers a subject often marginalized by historians, but one that underscores the crucial relationship between the Nazis' early anti-Polish actions and their later annihilation of the Jews. He shows in detail when, where, and how the Nazis' operations evolved into a highly efficient "science" of human roundups, expropriated property, and human cargo shipments en masse.
Ultimately, the need for forced labor drove the Nazis to deport fewer Poles than they had planned. In light of the unresolved tensions between racial ideology and economic necessity, Rutherford makes a convincing argument that Nazi deportation policy vis-
Synopsis
Follows the Nazis' attempts at a large-scale deportation system after its invasion of Poland in 1939 as it sought to reclaim territory and repatriate that space with an ever-expanding population of ethnic Germans. Standing in the way, however, were millions of ethnic Poles. Rutherford recounts the strenuous efforts and unexpected obstacles to the deportations, which in many ways were a dress rehearsal for the Final Solution.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
German and Polish Place Names
SS Ranks and Approximate U.S. Army Equivalents
Introduction: An Invincible Ostwall of Flesh and Blood
1. The "Polish Question" in German Thought and Action, 1830-1918
2. "Racial Reshuffling" in the East: The Genesis of the Program
3. Pipe Dreams and Preparations
4. The 1.Nahplan: Logistics, Limitations, and Lessons
5. Volksdeutschen, Poles, and Jews: An Ordering of Priorities
6. The 2.Nahplan
7. The Short Life of the the 3.Nahplan--1.Teilprogram
8. Postmortem: Evacuations versus Expediency
Notes
Bibliography
Index